Random

iPhone 16e: The “e” is for Egregious Pricing – Intego Mac Podcast, Episode 384

Posted on by

Apple replaces the entry level iPhone SE with the new iPhone 16e. Does the “e” stand for extravagant pricing? We now have more details about the security patches in Apple’s most recent operating system updates. iPhones sold in China will now have government mandated filters managing search results. And is it time to start worrying about the delays in Apple Intelligence features.

  • Apple’s New iPhone 16e – Is this the iPhone for Almost Everyone?
  • Introducing iPhone 16e – February 19 (Apple video)
  • iPhone 16e – Apple product page
  • Compare iPhone models
  • TikTok Returns to Apple’s App Store
  • Apple launches Apple TV app for Android phones and tablets
  • iOS 18.3.1 zero-day patch has been reverse-engineered
  • Mark Gurman: Siri overhaul may not arrive with iOS 18.4 in April—more likely 18.5 in May
  • Apple Plans to Overhaul China iPhones With AI by Middle of Year
  • Valve removes “PirateFi” Steam game that contained malware
  • “Aptoid” alternate app marketplace offers sketchy apps in EU

  • If you like the Intego Mac Podcast, be sure to follow it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon.

    Intego Mac Premium Bundle X9 is the ultimate protection and utility suite for your Mac. Download a free trial now at intego.com, and use this link for a special discount when you’re ready to buy.

    Get Apple security news delivered straight to your inbox, for free. Intego’s twice-monthly newsletter will keep you informed about Apple-related privacy and security, along with tips and tricks for getting the most out of your Mac or iPhone. Subscribe for free—no strings attached.


    Transcript of Intego Mac Podcast 384

    Voice Over 0:00
    This is the Intego Mac podcast—the voice of Mac security—for Thursday, February 20, 2025. This week’s Intego Mac Podcast. Security headlines include: Apple replaces the entry level iPhone SE with the new iPhone 16e. Does the “e” stand for extravagant pricing? We now have more details about the security patches in Apple’s most recent operating system updates. iPhones sold in China will now have government mandated filters managing search results. And is it time to start worrying about the delays in Apple Intelligence features. Now here are the hosts of the Intego Mac podcast. Veteran Mac journalist Kirk McElhearn and Intego’s chief security analyst, Josh Long.

    Kirk McElhearn 0:51
    Good morning, Josh. How are you today?

    Josh Long 0:53
    I’m doing well. How are you, Kirk?

    Apple introduces the iPhone 16e

    Kirk McElhearn 0:55
    I’m excited. We very often talk about new Apple products, but they’re announced a day or two before we start recording, and this just after we got together to prepare this episode. Apple released the new iPhone, the iPhone 16e we want to take a deep look at this, because I think we should do good cop, bad cop. You’re the bad cop and I’m the good cop because you don’t think this phone is very good, and I think it’s the iPhone for most people. So where do you want to start, Josh, what do you think of the new iPhone 16e.

    Josh Long 1:25
    If I’m playing bad cop, the first thing that bothers me about this is the price point. So we had the iPhone SE, which is now being replaced by the 16 lower case e, and the old iPhone SE third generation, which was the the previous one that we had for a few years almost.

    Kirk McElhearn 1:45
    Almost three years. It came out in 2022

    Josh Long 1:49
    Yeah, and that model was offered at $429 US. The 16e starts at 599 so it’s not even $100 more. It’s $170 more than the entry level iPhone SE third generation was, that’s a pretty big jump in price.

    Kirk McElhearn 2:09
    That’s, let’s see, doing the math in my head, about 40% more. Roughly. When Apple used to be able to sell a cheap phone, it was always okay. It’s It’s underpowered, it’s missing a lot of the specs and the features. And the iPhone SE was the last one that had a touch ID on it, so not only was the screen smaller because of the bezel for the touch ID, but you know, I know there are people who like touch ID, but face ID is a lot more efficient, and it always felt like it felt like the phone for people who really don’t need a phone, right? You don’t use a phone a lot, but you’re going to have a phone and you’re going to get an iPhone. And, okay, $429 and too much. Now you’re up to $600 599 let’s go at 600 and this is a real big expense. Now Apple, if you look at Apple’s compare iPhone models page, you can see how the marketing people have calculated this very carefully. You have three price points. Let’s just ignore the Pro models for now, Apple is selling the iPhone 16, the normal one. And we’ll ignore the plus size as well, because there’s no comparison. There’s no 16e plus. They’re selling the 16, the 15 and the 16e at 799, 699, and 599, and then, if you look at the iPhone 16 models. So if you go from the iPhone 16 Pro to the 16 to the 16e, it’s 999, 799, and 599, there’s that really comforting, three options. You know, when you go to a website and they have a subscription, you have three options, and the one in the middle is the one that they always recommend, right? The cheap one they show because they know you don’t want to buy the cheap one and the expensive one a lot of people won’t buy. So it’s the middle one they’re trying to push you toward. And here, it just feels strange the way the lineup is geared for cheap, middle, expensive. But which one do they want you to buy? I mean, do you want to pay $200 more for the 16 instead of the 16e? And once you’ve spent that $200 well, why not pay 200 more for the 16? Pro? Another thing is you can’t look at the total price. You have to look at the monthly price, because Apple is selling these, at least in the US and the UK, over 24 minutes with 0% interest. It’s 25 bucks a month to get the 16e. That’s the price of what three four coffees at Starbucks. It’s 33 a month for the 16 it’s 41 a month for the iPhone 16 Pro, if you look at it monthly, you can very quickly get prodded from $25 a month in an Apple Store, if you’re going to buy a phone, to up to 33 and up to 41 it’s not that big a difference, is it?

    Josh Long 4:48
    The 15 almost feels like it’s there just to give you a reason to upgrade to the 16, right? So if you’re comparing the 16e at the lowest price point, and you’re saying, I. I kind of would prefer to have the dynamic Island rather than a notch, right? Or maybe I really want to have two cameras, not just the one that’s on the 16e. So maybe I’ll choose the 15 base model instead of the 16e, so I can get those couple of extra features.

    Kirk McElhearn 5:17
    But think of what you’d be missing with the 15.

    Josh Long 5:21
    Yeah, exactly. So is it really worth that extra $100 because then, with the base 15, I also don’t get Apple Intelligence, and also maybe I might get a little bit less lifespan of that product, because who knows, with it being earlier than an Apple Intelligence compatible chip, maybe Apple’s gonna cut off iOS updates sooner for that 15 base model. Most people don’t think about that, but that’s something I think about. So if I’m gonna upgrade to the 15 anyway instead of the 16e, maybe I’ll just go another $100 beyond that and just get the 16.

    Kirk McElhearn 5:57
    And it’s still only $33 a month for the 16.

    Josh Long 6:00
    Yeah, which doesn’t sound that bad, however it’s it’s really different than when you compare the 16e next to the 16. There’s so little difference between the two that I think for most people, it probably makes sense to get the 16e instead of the 16.

    Kirk McElhearn 6:16
    Now, I thought you were going to be bad cop, and recommended people had to get the 16, and I’m the good cop who says My feeling is iPhone 16. E is the iPhone for everyone. It’s for people who don’t really care about extra cameras. It’s for people who just want an iPhone to do iPhone stuff and don’t care too much about the features. Come on. Let’s walk through some of the features this has, and the iPhone SE was always under featured and underpowered. This has, it’s a 6.1 inch display, so gone small phones. It has an OLED display. It has face ID. It starts with 128, gigabytes of storage and eight gigabytes of RAM. These are really good numbers, and in a way, this justifies the jump in price from 429, to 599, but it still doesn’t leave a bargain price iPhone, unless you look for refurbished models. We’ll talk about that later, maybe.

    Josh Long 7:04
    Now, all of those features that you just mentioned are standard across all three of these phones. So you’ve got the older 15 model that’s still being sold, and that’s at that middle price point, and the 16e, which is that now the cheapest price point, and the 16, which is at the highest of the three, right? Those all share those same features across all three of them.

    Kirk McElhearn 7:26
    Not all of them. The 15 doesn’t have eight gigabytes of RAM, which is one of the reasons why I can’t run Apple Intelligence. Now we’re assuming people care about Apple Intelligence. Some people do, and some people don’t. It’s also an a 16 chip, which is two generations older than the 18 in this iPhone, 16e, and as you mentioned earlier, this means it might not be supported as long, but it’s going to be a little bit slower. Most people don’t care how fast the iPhone is, because they don’t really do anything that needs it to be fast. But I mean, when you look at the three models, the 16 to 15 and the 16e, you can really drop the 15 and you’ve got two options, the 16 at 799, or the 16 eight, 599, or the 16 at $33 a month, and the 16 820, $5 a month. This is really important. Don’t think about how much it costs if you pay the whole thing. Think about how much it costs monthly. You don’t even notice.

    Josh Long 8:17
    Okay, so let’s just talk about the 16 and the 16e, what do you actually get for your extra $200?

    Kirk McElhearn 8:26
    Okay, so you get the camera control button, which I find really useless, and I’m someone who’s pretty into photography, you get a much better camera. It’s a dual camera system with a 48 megapixel fusion camera and a 12 megapixel ultra wide but the 16e has what they call a two in one camera system, which gives you a 1x and A 2x zoom and photos of either 24 or 48 megapixel. So it’s a pretty good single camera. There are a number of features you don’t get on the 16e. You don’t get macro photography. You don’t get spatial photos and videos, which most people don’t care about. You don’t get the dynamic Island. And I remember when the dynamic Island first came out, was it with the iPhone 14 Pro? And I thought it was such a cool idea, and I never use it. Very few apps actually display anything like the music app when I’m playing music or timers, but very few actually do anything. So you get a big, ugly notch on the 16e, and you get a smaller notch and dynamic island on the 16. There’s not a whole lot of difference beyond that. Now, the 16e has better battery life. Apple says up to 26 hours of video playback compared to 22 for the iPhone 16, which isn’t bad. They both have USB C and face ID. But here’s one thing that’s really missing on the 16e. It doesn’t do mag safe charging, and that seems to me really cheap of Apple. What could it cost to have mag safe charging? Two bucks per unit. It does chi wireless charging up to 7.5 watts, and that’s pretty slow.

    Josh Long 9:54
    I know I’m supposed to be bad cop here, so I’ll talk about the bad on this in a second. But just for. Second I’m going to pause bad cop, because I do want to point out, I personally don’t think that there are very many people who are wirelessly charging their iPhones out there, other than tech geeks. I feel like tech geeks, yes, a lot of tech geeks wirelessly charge their their iPhones, but I don’t know about really, like average users, they’re using the cable that comes in the box. They don’t even know you can charge these wirelessly. I would speculate, but, you know.

    Kirk McElhearn 10:26
    I’m not sure I agree, and I have no way of knowing. But I see people talking about mag safe and wireless charging all over the place. There are probably 700,000 different wireless charges available from Amazon by at least 5000 different companies. I think it is widely used, and maybe not everyone. But since it’s not mag safe, you can’t put a battery pack on the back or other mag safe things like stands and all that. Right?

    Josh Long 10:53
    That’s a good point. It so mag safe is not just for charging, because there are a lot of other accessories that use that magnetic coil, getting back to the Chi wireless charging that’s on the 16e, you can still put it on a mag safe charger. It’s just not going to magnetically lock in place and it’s not going to charge as fast. So the Chi wireless charging that it uses, it says for charging up to 7.5 watts, which I’ve always thought is kind of funny. I’m pretty sure Apple did this when it first introduced the Chi wireless charging 7.5 is not really part of any standard. There it goes from five watts to 15 watts. And for some reason, Apple has just decided to go down the middle and just say, yeah, we’ll let you charge at 7.5 watts.

    Kirk McElhearn 11:43
    Well, it could be, you know, since all the other wireless charging iPhones are mag safe, it could be a limit that they’ve imposed since the point of mag safe is it aligns the charger and the whatever the opposite is called on the phone. And when you’re just doing normal Qi charging, when you put a thing on a charger, it doesn’t get aligned, so it’s a waste of electricity. A lot of it converts to heat. So maybe Apple’s limiting it to 7.5 to be safe. I know that Android phones have been able to do like 25 watt charging for years. Apple is a little bit slow with that, but that’s not a big deal. I think if you think most people aren’t using it, then that’s not a big deal. They do say it’s fast charge, capable up to 50% charge in 30 minutes with a 20 watt adapter or higher. I don’t think the SE was fast chargeable before, but I’m not sure that’s—

    Josh Long 12:33
    That’s if you’re charging with USB C, of course.

    Kirk McElhearn 12:36
    That’s with the cable. Yeah. Other than that, I mean, I’m gonna say it again. This is the iPhone for everyone, regardless of the price. It’s 25 bucks a month. Don’t look at it as $600 Look at this. 25 bucks a month. People aren’t really into this. They don’t want to choose too much, right? You get two colors. You get black and white. You don’t have to worry about the colors. You don’t have to worry too much about any there’s not two sizes, like the 16 and the 16 plus. It’s all one size. It’s really like a Henry Ford iPhone, in a way.

    Josh Long 13:04
    The last thing I’m going to say about this, on the bad cop side, is I have to go back to the price. I I really think that this, this is a, it feels like a miss for Apple, or a potential miss, because, yes, maybe they’ll make more revenue, because now the base model is going to be higher, but I’m concerned that this could lead some people to say, Oh, well, I’m just not going to get an iPhone then, because why get an iPhone when I can get an Android phone for so much cheaper. There’s so many different options on on Android, and I don’t have to spend $600 just to get in the door.

    Kirk McElhearn 13:47
    Okay, we’re gonna take a break. When we come back, we’re gonna talk a little bit more about the iPhone 16e and then we’ll talk about some other news.

    Voice Over 13:54
    Protecting your online security and privacy has never been more important than it is today. Intego has been proudly protecting Mac users for over 25 years. And our latest Mac protection suite includes the tools you need to stay protected. Intego’s Mac Premium Bundle X9 includes Virus Barrier, the world’s best Mac anti-malware protection, Net Barrier, powerful inbound and outbound firewall security, Personal Backup to keep your important files safe from ransomware. And much more to help protect, secure and organize your Mac. Download the free trial of Mac Premium Bundle X9 from intego.com today. When you’re ready to buy, Intego Mac Podcast listeners can get a special discount by using the link in this episode’s show notes at podcast.intego.com. That’s podcast.intego.com and click on this episode to find the special discount link exclusively for Intego Mac Podcast listeners. Intego. World class protection and utility software for Mac users made by the Mac security experts.

    iPhone 16e’s nomenclature

    Kirk McElhearn 15:05
    So just before the break, you were talking about Android phones, and it’s worth noting that Apple has somewhat copied Google’s nomenclature for this phone. So for several years, Google has been selling their normal phone and an a phone. So they had the Pixel six A alongside the Pixel six and the seven A and the eight A, they don’t have a nine a yet to go along with the Pixel nine, which is the latest phone and apple. Of course, they didn’t want to choose a but they have the same lower case letter they chose an E, which I think stands for egregious price. Is that what it’s for? Is it for economical? Is it for excessive? I mean, it could be. Apple hasn’t said as of we’re recording this just a couple hours after it was announced, and I haven’t seen any explanation as to what the E stands for.

    Josh Long 15:46
    I wouldn’t be surprised if some Apple executive says what it stands for in an interview or gives some kind of hint at it, but I would guess that it might be economical, because it’s the cheapest of the iPhone 16 lineup, at least, even though it doesn’t really compare to the SE pricing entry level, maybe essential features, maybe I don’t know something like that. Interestingly, though, they do, when you look at the page for this on Apple’s website, they stylize that E with a gradient color that matches the Apple Intelligence gradient that they’re using. So that’s kind of weird, because Apple Intelligence, I don’t there’s not really a prominent either.

    Kirk McElhearn 16:26
    Well, there’s two E’s three E’s in intelligence. Actually, if I asked ChatGPT How many user intelligence it would probably say there’s just one. I don’t know if you ever read about strawberry, it gets the number of hours wrong, but I think the whole point of the E is to match intelligence. So why isn’t it the apple 16? I or Apple 16? Ai? I mean, they’ve boxed themselves into a corner with this idea. I do want to point out, though that they also discontinued the iPhone 14 models that they were selling. So the current iPhone line as of today was of Friday the 21st when this is pre ordered, you start with the iPhone 16e at 599 the iPhone 15 is 699, the iPhone 15 plus is 799, the iPhone 16 is 799, the iPhone 16 plus is 899, the iPhone 16 Pro is 999, and the iPhone 16 pro Max is 1199, aren’t they slicked away, except for The last gap of 200 each one’s $100 more. So you look at this one, well, I could spend $100 more, which is maybe six bucks a month, and I could go up to the next one and the next one and the next one. And that’s the whole point, isn’t it? They never want you to buy the cheap one. They want the cheap one to get you in the door, right?

    Josh Long 17:36
    And they get you comparing models. And then that’s where you get into the cycle of well, maybe I could go $100 more and just get the next model up, and then you start comparing those.

    Kirk McElhearn 17:45
    Especially if you’re paying monthly with no interest, right? That that’s a that’s really important to think about. So anyway, I’m going to recommend it to anyone who doesn’t care too much about their phone but wants an iPhone. I think in spite of the price, it’s egregious and excessive and ebullient and economical or whatever. I think it’s a really good iPhone, come on, OLED display, face ID, lots of storage, lots of RAM. You can’t compare this to the iPhone SE. The iPhone SE is like, like an iPhone four, almost.

    Josh Long 18:17
    Yeah, I agree with you. In spite of the I feel like too high of an entry level price. I do. I do agree that if you’re gonna start out with an iPhone, if you just need a basic iPhone, then this is definitely the model that I think 99% of people will probably just want to get, like unless you really need the cameras of the Pro model or something like that. You know, there’s not really a whole lot of reason to get anything beyond the 16e, the base, cheapest model.

    TikTok app is now back on the App Store

    Kirk McElhearn 18:49
    There you go. All right. Some other news, TikTok returns to Apple’s App Store. Apparently, the US Attorney General sent a letter to Apple and Google saying that they wouldn’t be prosecuted if they returnedTikTok to the App Store. Is that correct?

    Josh Long 19:02
    Apparently. So I guess Apple has decided that it’s going to trust that. So now TikTok, as of last week, is now available in the app store again. There are some updates to TikTok and other bytedance apps.

    Apple TV App for Android

    Kirk McElhearn 19:16
    Okay, Apple launched a new app for Android. I guess no one saw this coming, did they?

    Josh Long 19:21
    Yeah, this kind of came out of the blue. Last week, Apple launched the Apple TV app for Android phones and tablets. So previously, Apple TV now this is a little confusing, because Apple has a service called Apple TV plus, and the Apple TV app gives you access to that service. You don’t actually have to own any Apple products to have the Apple TV plus streaming service. It’s just a streaming service that happens to have Apple’s name in it.

    Kirk McElhearn 19:50
    But you know what you have to do? You have to create an Apple account.

    Josh Long 19:53
    You do have to create an Apple account. Yes, you don’t need to own an Apple TV either. That’s the other thing that’s kind of confusing about all this.

    Kirk McElhearn 19:58
    I know you’ve. Got the device and the app and the streaming service, and what’s next?

    Josh Long 20:02
    Yeah, so Okay, so the Apple released the app for Android phones and tablets, and so now you can get access to that streaming service, and you don’t have to go through I think you might have been able to access it through a browser, technically, but now you don’t have to do that anymore. There’s a native app for Android. There already was kind of an Android app, but it was only available for Android TVs.

    Kirk McElhearn 20:26
    Well, it’s not just for the streaming service, it’s for Apple’s store, where you can download and rent movies and TV shows. So yes, they want people to sign up for streaming, but they also want people to pay to rent and buy stuff from Apple.

    Josh Long 20:40
    It’s kind of funny that it actually took that long, because Apple Music has been available on Android for quite some time.

    Kirk McElhearn 20:46
    I think this is part of their promotion for Severance, which is an extremely popular series, at least as far as Apple TV plus is concerned. And they promoting it in every way possible, with a podcast and books you can download and ads and behind the scenes videos, they’re really going all out on this seems like that zero day patch that Apple released with iOS, 18 point 3.1, which we talked about last week, has been reversed engineered, and we know more about it, right?

    Zero-Day Patch Reversed Engineered

    Josh Long 21:13
    So a research group put out some details about exactly what that patch contains. It turns out it was pretty easy to reverse engineer the patch, because they just had to compare 18.3 to 18 point 3.1 which really just included the one change, which was for this zero day physical access vulnerability where somebody could bypass USB Restricted Mode. The details are out there, and I’ve seen some people say this is terrible, like, how dare they publish this information? But also, at the same time, you got to realize the bad guys, or the people who want to break into your phone already did this, like on Monday, the same day that this came out. So this is something that all the bad guys are doing. They are reverse engineering Apple’s patches as soon as Apple releases patches so that they can start exploiting those vulnerabilities against all the people who still haven’t updated yet. So this is an important thing to realize, and it’s an important reason why you should update as quickly as you reasonably can after new updates come out. And this goes for not just operating system updates, but other software as well, your browsers, your Wi Fi, router firmware, etc.

    Delays in Apple Intelligence Features

    Kirk McElhearn 22:25
    Okay, I want to take a stroll down memory. Elaine, do you remember Josh last June, when we were watching apple at the worldwide developer conference, telling us about all the miraculous features in Apple Intelligence that we would have very soon, coming in the fall, with the iPhone 16 and, well, we got some of them, and we got some in what, October, November and January. They’ve been updated, and we’re still waiting for this magical series that’s going to change our lives, because they’re going to know everything about us. It’s on our phone. And originally we heard it was going to be out in April, and now Mark German Apple is designated week. He says it’s more likely to come out in May with iOS 18.5 and you know what may is really close to? It’s close to next year’s worldwide developer conference, and if Apple hasn’t released a new Siri by June, this is a huge bait and switch, where they’re telling everyone buy the iPhone 16, because you’re going to get Apple Intelligence. But you know what? You’re actually not getting the most important feature until the iPhone 17 comes out.

    Josh Long 23:28
    Yeah, so this release schedule is really has not been ideal. I think for Apple, to say the least, it’s led to a lot of people being disappointed about Apple Intelligence, too many delays, especially on a big marquee feature, right? That was advertised. But I do kind of expect that we’ll probably see something similar happen again this coming year with iOS 19. This is speculation, of course. We don’t really know yet what Apple is going to announce, but I do anticipate that we’ll get more Apple Intelligence features, and I would not be surprised if they kind of our drip fed to us over the course of the following year.

    Kirk McElhearn 24:04
    You know, these features are still officially in beta, even though it doesn’t say so in the settings anymore. When the first features came out in October, November, it did say in the in the settings that it was in beta, and it doesn’t say so quite obviously anymore, but they’re still in beta, and they’re going to be in beta forever. This is like, remember how when Gmail came out and it was in beta for like 12 years, I think this is going to be the same for Apple Intelligence. Apple has finally gotten a deal to sell their iPhones with AI in China. Now, China is very what’s the word restrictive about the kind of things you can talk about, like, you can’t talk about Tiananmen Square. You can’t talk about Winnie the Pooh. If you don’t know about Winnie the Pooh in China, look it up. So what’s going to happen is Apple is actually forced, or allowing the Chinese to install software on iPhones. I don’t think there’s ever been any additional software on iPhones before, in order to filter the result. That come from Apple’s AI model when someone asks a question about specific things, Tiananmen, Taiwan, the Dalai Lama, etc.

    Josh Long 25:08
    So the way this is supposed to work, evidently, Alibaba and Baidu are going to be partnering with Apple. So Alibaba is going to have technology that runs on iPhones in China, and it’s going to modify the outputs of Apple Intelligence to make sure they’re compliant with Chinese law. And then Baidu is going to have their technology that will be doing the visual intelligence part of it. So they’re using two Chinese companies essentially, to make sure that Apple is in compliance, that they’re not using ChatGPT technology, which China doesn’t prefer, and that they’re compliant with all the Chinese laws.

    Kirk McElhearn 25:51
    So Visual Intelligence isn’t something installed on the device. It’s just saying to check. So when you use visual intelligence on an iPhone, you press a button, you point your iPhones camera at something, and then you press the shutter button, and then it uploads it to Google to search to find information about it. Here, there’s nothing installed on the phone. It’s just sending it to Baidu instead of Google. And I think Google isn’t even allowed in China, so Baidu is the big search engine, but the fact that Alibaba, which is basically a big retail company, is installing software on an iPhone. Is something that seems to me that Apple is bowing down to pressure from the Chinese because, well, iPhones haven’t been selling well in China, and they have the new iPhone, 16e that they want everyone to buy in China.

    Josh Long 26:35
    It does seem maybe a little bit concerning, but then again, I mean, obviously Apple has to comply with the law in whatever country they decide to sell their devices in, right? So I understand the perspective there. And if you’re an iPhone user in China and well, you probably want to get Apple Intelligence features, because Apple’s been marketing them for quite a while now, and they haven’t been available to you. So at least this gives Apple users in China the ability to use Apple Intelligence functionality.

    Kirk McElhearn 27:06
    Okay, two quick stories before we wrap up. It seems that there was a Steam game that contained malware and valve, the owner of steam has removed it. This is a Windows only game, but it does remind you you should be careful about downloading things from any app store, right?

    Malware in Steam Game and Aptoid App Marketplace

    Josh Long 27:19
    The app was called pirate fi, and this was yet another example of Steeler malware, and it got into an app store. So good reminder, don’t necessarily trust anything that you get from an app store. So that actually brings us to the last story that we’ll talk about today, which is I read about an alternative app marketplace that’s available in the EU. It’s called aptoid. And after I saw a headline about this, I decided, oh, okay, cool, I’ll go check out the website. I’m not in the EU. I can’t download it or install it anyway, but I was kind of curious about it, and the very first app that they’re advertising being available for iOS is an app that has some clear copyright violations. And it’s kind of interesting, because the same company says that they are compliant with laws, and they’re the safest App Store, according to some independent researcher. And the thing is, if they’re willing to behave unethically in one way, like, again, allowing clear copyright violations and promoting them, you have to wonder if they might behave unethically in other ways. So my recommendation would be to avoid aptoid and honestly be careful with any alternative app marketplaces in the EU just in general.

    Kirk McElhearn 28:33
    We’ll put links in the show notes to everything about the iPhone 60 Apple’s product page, the video that Apple made, which is about 12 minutes presenting it. I was struck by how sad Tim Cook looks at the beginning of the video. He kind of doing a Bill Murray impression, or it looks like a hostage video. He doesn’t look very motivated by this, but you will see how it presents the iPhone 16e and all the wonderful features it can do. We’ll have an article about an Intego Mac security blog. And if you want an iPhone 16e, you better hurry, because it’s going on sale Friday, and my guess is it’s not going to sell out very quickly, so there’s no rush until next week. Josh, stay secure.

    Josh Long 29:08
    All right, stay secure.

    Voice Over 29:11
    Thanks for listening to the Intego Mac podcast. The voice of Mac security with your hosts, Kirk McElhearn and Josh Long. To get every weekly episode be sure to follow us in Apple podcasts or subscribe in your favorite podcast app, and if you can leave a rating, a like or a review. Links to topics and information mentioned in the podcast can be found in the show notes for the episode at podcast.intego.com. The Intego website is also where to find details on the full line of Intego security and utility software. intego.com.

    About Kirk McElhearn

    Kirk McElhearn writes about Apple products and more on his blog Kirkville. He is co-host of the Intego Mac Podcast, as well as several other podcasts, and is a regular contributor to The Mac Security Blog, TidBITS, and several other websites and publications. Kirk has written more than two dozen books, including Take Control books about Apple's media apps, Scrivener, and LaunchBar. Follow him on Twitter at @mcelhearn. View all posts by Kirk McElhearn →